


a reason to trust

by throughthemist



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Extended Scene, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Minor Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 15:57:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17604413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throughthemist/pseuds/throughthemist
Summary: The start of an unexpected but meaningful friendship.An extended version of the scene in CA: TWS where Steve and Natasha go for a drive.





	a reason to trust

**Author's Note:**

> I've always loved Steve and Natasha's friendship and wished it got developed a bit more in TWS. So I wrote it!   
> The first 200 or so words use the dialogue from the film before it devolves into the original story.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

“Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?” Natasha breaks the easy silence that’s settled between them.

“Nazi Germany. And we’re borrowing, take your feet off the dash.”

“Alright, I have a question for you. Which you do not have to answer, but I feel like if you don’t answer it you’re kind of answering it, you know?”

“What?” Steve says resignedly, already dreading the question he knows is coming.

“Was that your first kiss since 1945?”

Steve huffs a laugh, “that bad, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well it kind of sounds like that’s what you’re saying.”

“No I didn’t. I just wondered how much practice you’ve had.”

“You don’t need practice.”

“Everybody needs practice.”

“It was not my first kiss since 1945. I’m 95, not dead,” he laughs.

“Nobody special though?”

“Believe it or not, it’s kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience.”

“Well that’s alright, you just make something up.”

“What, like you?”

“I don’t know, The truth is a matter of circumstance. It’s not all things to all people all of the time. And neither am I.”

“That’s a tough way to live.” Steve says with a frown.

“It’s a good way not to die though.” Natasha says wistfully.

“You know it’s kinda hard to trust someone when you don’t know who that someone really is.”

“Yeah. Who do you want me to be?”

“How ‘bout a friend?”

“Well there’s a chance you might be in the wrong business Rogers.” She drawls.

“I don’t see having friendships as being a weakness, Natasha, and I don’t think you do either.”

“Sure. But the less you have, the less there is to lose. You of all people should know about that.”

“Gotta surround yourself with the ones that make it all worth it then,” Steve shoots back. Unable to back down from this particular argument but knowing Natasha won’t concede the point either, he changes the subject. “What’s your obsession with setting me up with someone anyway?”

“I’ve been told it helps with getting back into the world.”

“Oh yeah, talking from experience?”

“I am, actually.”

“And I’m not as unobservant as you take me for. Let me guess, Clint?” He says, gesturing to the small arrow necklace sat demurely around Natasha’s neck.  
Natasha looks away, hands absentmindedly fiddling with the arrow, a small smile on her face as she looks out the window. It’s shocking, seeing her this way, Steve thinks it’s the most stripped back and comfortable he’s ever seen her. And they’re on the run, both fugitives of the state (and not for the first time either) with only each other to trust. It’s not exactly the set up for a miraculous friendship, but something unexpectedly tender is brewing between them, and doesn’t that say a lot about them - that it takes an extreme circumstance to even begin the discussion of trust and open friendship. For a split second Steve is oddly grateful for their dire situation, if only because he’s finally seeing his friend for who she is, and allowing her to see him truly for the first time too. 

“I hope you’re both very happy.”

“I want the same for you Steve,” Natasha finally looks back at him, face open and earnest.

“Kristen from statistics, right? Yeah, still not ready for that.” Internal philosophising aside, Steve still isn’t one to have an extended emotional conversation without trying to run away at least once.

“Don’t deflect Steve, you know what I mean. Do you even have any friends?”

“Isn’t that what we are?”

“Okay, do you have any friends outside the team?”

Steve isn’t sure he wants to admit the answer to that one to himself, let alone to Natasha.

“That’s what I thought,” she says, not unkindly. “Just think about it, okay?”

Unsurprisingly her pitying tone does nothing but rile Steve up. “Believe it or not Natasha, I do actually talk to people outside of the Avengers.”

Natasha hums in reply.

“I literally flirted with this guy I met running two days ago.” And, oh. That wasn’t what he meant to say.

“A guy?” Her tone is coloured with surprise but nothing else, and Steve’s anxiously beating heart slows just a little.

“What, Captain America can’t like guys?” He bristles. “That’s one thing I thought I didn’t have to worry about in this century.”

“Don’t bite my head off Steve, I’m just surprised. Which is surprising in and of itself, so well done - even I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well. Got quite good at hiding it.”

“So, the running man? Spill.”

“There’s nothing to tell Natasha.”

She snorts in reply. “Bullshit. The first person you’ve flirted with in forever and there’s nothing to tell? You really are a terrible liar, we should work on that.”

“What was that you were just saying about having no idea I was bi?”

“Get to the point, is it the guy I saw you with when I collected you the other day?”

“His name’s Sam. And yes.” Steve sighs, knowing he’s opening himself up to a new level of interrogation.

“I need more than his name Stevie,” Natasha sing-songs with a smirk on her face.

“Fine! He’s very attractive, was in the Air Force in pararescue and he works as a counsellor down at the VA now. He’s smart, funny, and he’s the first person in forever who’s actually seen me as Steve, and not ‘Captain America’.” He says the name mockingly. “But it doesn’t matter, I’m still not ready.”

“He sounds nice, Steve. Like he’d be really good for you.” She says kindly, before continuing in a more light-hearted way. “And I can personally vouch for the ‘very attractive’ part of that.”

Steve laughs, a blush rising onto his cheeks despite his best efforts to will it down. “I went to see him at the VA yesterday, after I found out about Project Insight. Didn’t tell him anything about it obviously, but still, I felt better even after two minutes talking to him about nothing.” He frowns a little and when he continues talking his voice takes on a sorrowful tone, “he lost his best friend in a war too, you know. I just, I know his pain, I still carry it around with me everyday. I wonder if we could help each other.”

Natasha has been listening intently, eyes tracking every miniscule movement on Steve’s normally stoic face and she can clearly see how much this weighs down on him. But still, the spark of hope she hears in his voice belies the fear there, and she herself has felt that. The worry that nothing will work out, and the tight knit of unease in her chest that tells her nothing good will ever last still plagues her, but since listening to that one bit of hope she’s been a different person. Being able to sit in an enclosed space and have a conversation like this is testament to that, and sure - she’s a spy and he’s a super-soldier, but Natasha senses they have more in common than what’s on the surface and she can’t help but prod a little more.  
“It sounds like you could. Why don’t you take a chance on him?”

Steve sighs in response, a weary sound that doesn’t match up with his youthful appearance. “It’s only been two years for me, you know?”

“It’s easy to forget sometimes, I’m sorry.”

“For me, two years ago I was falling head over heels for Peggy. Everyone knows that as a fact they read in their history books, but I don’t think they understand what it means for me. She’s the first person I ever loved like that and I still do love her to be honest. Don’t know if I ever won’t. And to wake up and still be exactly how I was then, emotionally and physically, but everyone around me has lived their lives? It’s...hard. No other way to put it.”  
“So Peggy was the one for you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it Nat.” Steve’s shoulders are rigid with tension, but still he carries on. “I think she could have been, had we got more time. Things didn’t work out that way for us though, so maybe it’s time I did move on.”

“And Sam? He could be the one you move on with?” She pushes.

“I don’t know.” Steve rolls his shoulders and chuckles, “I keep thinking of what Buck would say, you know?”

“Think he wouldn’t approve?”

“What? No. We lived in quite a liberal part of Brooklyn and neither of us much cared for what people thought about same-sex couples.” Steve snorts a laugh, “be pretty damn hypocritical of him if he did care - Buck fell hard and fast for every lady or fella that caught his eye, the insufferable flirt, and he wasn’t shy about singing their praises to me either. Think the least he could do would be to return the favour.”

Natasha’s eyebrows shoot upwards, but she knows better than to stop Steve mid-flow.

“No, it’s just I can’t picture them together is all, on one hand I think they’d drive each other crazy, but on the other I’m pretty sure they would join forces to prank me whenever possible.” Steve has a far-off look in his eyes before he shakes his head and forcibly makes himself focus on the road. “Still, not really worth thinking about seeing as it won’t ever happen. Probably won’t ever get the courage to ask Sam out.”

“What, Captain America isn’t brave enough to ask a guy out?” Natasha teases.

Steve honest to god whines his reply, “how do people even do that nowadays? I swear Peggy was the one to ask me out first, I literally don’t know how!”

Not for the first time, Natasha wishes she’d been able to meet Peggy back in the day, she’s sure they would have got on like a house on fire. “Maybe start by asking for his number and going for dinner and drinks? That’s what people do casually these days.” It’s easy for her to channel confidence when speaking about this now, but before she asked Clint out she’d been furiously googling dating protocol on a burner phone.

“That what you and Clint did, then?” Steve sees right through her.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up Rogers. It’s not like we’d go to the gun range on a date, is it?”

“So you are dating then?” Steve says with a smug look of victory, and damn, Natasha hadn’t meant to let that one slip.

“Shut up old man.”

“Mr and Mrs Romanoff-Barton does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Steve valiantly tries to hold back his laughter.

“If you tell anyone I’ll kill you.” Natasha is only half-joking.

“Likewise,” Steve says more seriously, “I’m not quite at the stage where I can tolerate the entire word knowing I like girls and guys. Whole lifetime of hiding that isn’t easy to get rid of even if you are told it’s fine now a million times.”

“Don’t have to explain that one to me, I get it. Let me know when you are ready though - I would look great as your maid of honour.”

Steve laughs despite himself. “You’re like an annoying little sister, you know that right?”

“Don’t think I’ve ever been called that before actually.” Natasha says, feeling warmth in her chest at the easy friendship they’ve found themselves in. 

Neither of them had siblings, but she guesses this is kind of what it must be like - knowing and trusting someone always has your back, even if you don’t know exactly why you trust that so implicitly, but more importantly, always having someone there to annoy who will annoy you right back, no matter what.  
She looked over at Steve and caught his eye, for the first time deciding not to hide the smile that cropped up in response to his grin, not hiding the warmth in her eyes. She felt comfortable, safe. 

They’d both found another person they could trust.


End file.
